POSTMODERN PREACHING rediscovers direct engagement between scriptures and tradition with the whole human experience. There are no restrictions to overcome, as presented by Modernity. Rather, human concerns and questions are recognized and addressed in texts that know the human condition thoroughly, yet also bear witness to the power of the sacred. The preacher hosts a "sacred conversation" between all past texts and each occasion they are read and interpreted publicly.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Proper 4, Year A

Most ancient cultures had a flood story. It was used to signify a new beginning, re-birth, second chance or, in the Hebrew scriptures, a "new covenant." Usually it is accomplished through a single person. In this case, Noah.

The psalmist (46) asserts that God "looms" upon the earth even in natural disasters as well as human made crises of war and peace.

Just prior to this excerpt from Deuteronomy, Moses has reviewed the many times the Jews had been unfaithful with God and concludes with this sentiment, " You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you." Now Moses poses a stark choice: obedience/blessing or disobedience/curse.

Using stock phrases from other psalms, the psalmist (31) expresses an urgent plea for God's ear amidst the ugly gossip and even slander whispered by his enemies.

Paul grapples with a red-hot issue for Jews and non-Jews for the followers of Jesus: the role of the Law. He argues that what he calls "the law of faith" "upholds" "the old Law" but supersedes it. The "law of faith" is an acceptance of a "gift" from God by any and all who will receive it. The "gift" is "the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

Jesus offers a stark contrast between merely professing faith and actually living it.He provides a vivid illustration. Building the foundation for your home on ground easy to dig in might make the job easier and go faster than building on rock. But when the inevitable rain, wind and floods come, the structure that took more time and effort and is built on the rock of "these words of mine" will still be standing. Matthew, as well as Mark, notes that Jesus' teaching was original, not needing the credibility of citing and explicating past authorities, "as the scribes."

Today's readings bring forward the question: What are you staking your life on? Paul Ricoeur made important contributions to our postmodern understanding of language and hermeneutics. He also occasionally applied his ideas in the realm of religious faith. For example, in a collection of essays entitled Figuring the Sacred (1995) he wrote about what he calls "the economy of the gift." He says that this "gift" includes the "gift of creation, gift of Torah, gift of pardon, gift of hope." Pardon and hope are made uniquely clear in Jesus Christ who always is the "how much more of God." He cites Paul's understanding, especially in his letter to the Romans, of Christ as God's "gift." From an awareness of "gift" flows "the logic of superabundance" which is the "opposite pole to the logic of equivalence of everyday morality." When one accepts her very existence on this earth as gift, then she sees herself as both recipient and as gift-giver to others. Ricoeur writes of "incarnational attestation," which is not an intellectual certitude (we are too aware of our own past mistakes to make that claim) but we are certain-- in the sense that we are willing to stake our lives on --the belief that we live by grace ("superabundance") and we have the capacity, indeedobligation, through our words and deeds to impart grace to others. Thereby, words of faith and our actual words and actions of everyday living become the same. In The Conflict of Interpretations (1974) Ricoeur writes: "The logic of surplus and excess is as much the folly of the Cross as it is the wisdom of the Resurrection. " (p. 410)

Annalena Altarpiece, Convent of San Marco, Florence

Fra Giovanni da Fiesole ("Angelico") c.1400-1455

"Sacra Conversazione"

Fra. Angelico, a member of the preaching order of the Dominicans, is credited with introducing into the Western imagination the conceit of "sacra conversazione." Saints from the Bible, the past and the near-past are shown together in animated convrsation around the Madonna and Christ Child. In the "Angelina Altarpiece" in the Convent of San Marco in Florence, he depicts St. Peter Martyr a dynamic preacher ranked with Dominic himself and martyred in 1251, Saints Comas and Damian twins known for their gifts of healing and martyred in 303, St. John the Evangelist, St. Lawrence martyred in the persecutions of the Emperor Valerian in 258 and St. Francis of Assisi. Holding their texts for ready reference, they speak, listen and respond to each other in a timeless conversation initiated by the scriptures.

"Other voices are at once the past and future of my own voice. The past because they have always already called me and even named me, they have already addressed themselves to me, and through their immemorial past, immemorial as far as I am concerned since they preceded the I, they have always already gathered lights, no matter how obscure, in the place that becomes, little by little, my place. Future of my voice also, since it is only through them that I can learn to speak and to say something"

Jean-Luis Chretien, The Call and the Response, (p.81)--------------------------------------------------------------------------"You may say something new and yet it must all be old. In fact you must confine yourself to saying old things-- and all the same it must be something new! Different interpretations must correspond to different applications. A poet too has constantly to ask himself: 'but is what I am writing really true?' -- and does this necessarily mean: 'is this how it happens in reality?' Yes, you have to assemble bits of old material. But into a building."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, (p. 40e)--------------------------------------------------------------------------"...'[D]econstruction' has this peculiarity: if we look back at its origin in the text of [Heidegger's] Being and Time, it is the last state of the tradition-- its last state of retransmission, to us and by us, of the whole tradition in order to bring it back into play in its totality. To put the tradition into play according to deonstruction, according to Destruktion, (a term Heidegger was determined to protect against Zerstorung, i.e. against 'destruction,' and that he characterized as Abbau, 'taking apart') means neither to destroy in order to form anew nor to perpetuate-- two hypotheses that would imply a system given as such and untouchable as such. To deconstruct means to take apart, to dissemble, to losen the assembled structure in order to give it some play to the possibility from which it emerged but which, qua structure, it hides."